Here it must be confessed that modern sympathy is apt to falter, for though we can understand the zeal of American tourists for chips of palaces and the communal moral code peculiar to archæologists, coin collectors, and umbrella snatchers, we cannot understand the enthusiasm which the manliest, holiest, and robustest minds then displayed for relics, for stray split straws and strained twigs from the fledged bird's nests whence holy souls had fled to other skies.